Top producers believe Jagan government is right
- IndiaGlitz, [Thursday,October 14 2021]
The Jaganmohan Reddy government has received flak from the cine media for allegedly trying to subvert the future of the Telugu film industry by allegedly pushing through a so-called monopolistic online ticketing portal. This doesn't seem to be a genuine complaint against the YCP government, unlike the legitimate complaint about the low ticket prices.
Barring a fringe in the Telugu film industry and naive sections of media, nobody in Tollywood believes that the YCP government is looking at amassing the box office collections so that the crores of rupees pocketed by it on a daily basis can be put into its own account before being distributed to distributors/producers at its sweet will. Producers such as Dil Raju are well aware of the fact that the proposal is to achieve the streamlining of the private ticketing modes. With the integration of the various channels (both online and offline) through which cinema tickets are sold, the government aims to track the actual collections and hold theatres that evade taxes accountable.
As per producer Bunny Vasu, at least 200 theatres in Andhra Pradesh have been claiming that their annual revenue from the sale of tickets is well under Rs 20 lakh. While this is abysmally low and is most unlikely to a true figure, what happens to the GST that these theatres are supposed to be paying? This is the question that is said to be haunting the AP government.
When the modalities of the online portal brought in by the AP government are known, most of the speculations against it will likely turn out to be false. This is what top producers believe. That's why they have been cooperating with the government.